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Re: "lier or a fool"

Originally Posted by squarepeg

i'll move up a couple of frames they are working to the next box.

I think that is the crux of checkerboarding. You are breaking up the honey dome and giving more space. Up here I think it is safer to just pull two frames straight up into the next box and replace with empty comb. Continue doing that until the hive is as high as you want to go. It is a much quicker manipulation.

Re: "lier or a fool"

Originally Posted by Michael Palmer

> Walt believes that backfilling comes first, as an intentional procedure the bees use to initiate a reproductive swarm. I believe backfilling is caused by lack of storage room and is the trigger for swarming.

Two beekeepers with different beliefs, imagine that! So what's with the topic "liar or fool"? Kiss and make up.

Re: "lier or a fool"

You guys have been busy this morning. Walt believes that backfilling is intentional because it starts at a given point in colony growth, and is not relative to flow intensity at that time. The colony deliberately leaves a fixed amount of capped honey reserve overhead to carry them through the swarm prep period. Wintered in a shallow and a deep, the colony doesn't open honey in the shallow (usually) before starting backfilling of the deep. They use the break in functional comb as the demarcation line between the honey reserve and the broodnest.

Mike does not see this in his hives where the cluster is at the top. They have consumed their reserve to survive the winter. Some northern beekeepers have to feed in late winter to sustain the colony until field forage is available.

We, collectively, have forgotten their heritage as forest dwellers. The honeybee's survival format, instincts, and activity timing are oriented to life in the extended forest. Those characteristics were selected for, long before man cleared land for his purposes. Even the fall flow is an anomaly to their instincts - not many weeds in the forest.

As that heritage applies to the question of backfilling, the colony must get survival requirements accomplished on the early-season period of tree bloom. That includes both reproduction and accumulation of winter provisions. Their format serves them well. The same backfilling that generates young bees to go with the reproductive swarm also gets a leg up on accumulation of winter stores. I can't make myself believe that it's either accidental or coincidental.

Re: "lier or a fool"

Originally Posted by Michael Palmer

Walt believes that backfilling comes first, as an intentional procedure the bees use to initiate a reproductive swarm. I believe backfilling is caused by lack of storage room and is the trigger for swarming.

Re: "lier or a fool"

Originally Posted by Michael Palmer

Well, if the strong colonies swarmed early, why would they swarm later?

believe it or not the strongest colonies i.e. the ones that were bigger and heavier going into winter and built up the fastest (and also had some honey left in the supers) were the ones that did not swarm. it was the smaller ones that failed to build up enough to move up into the supers. so they were too weak to build up and populate the supers yet strong enough to swarm, go figure.

Originally Posted by Michael Palmer

Well, of course. You didn't know what you were doing and didn't know how to manage your bees so they wouldn't swarm. No different that any other beginner.

guilty as charged. i was surprised by the fact it was the dinks that swarmed, i just kept waiting for them to move up onto that empty comb. i must confess that i wasn't looking at the broodnest or i may have discovered swarm preps underway and could have split them. although, i'm happy to allow some swarms go into the surrounding woods hoping that they will survive and provide drones for mating.

Originally Posted by Michael Palmer

I don't doubt it. Did they stop short of entering the supers because of the space between the brood nest and the honey supers or because the colony wasn't populous enough to enter the supers. Swarming is a re-queening process that some stocks use to re-queen themselves. Is has nothing to do with a so-called functional break between supers.

well they crowded that space below the break enough to swarm, and totally ignored the empty comb above the break. these bees are from feral survivor stock and could very well have strong swarm tendencies. some of those dinks kicked out four swarms before they were through. good for the meta-population, bad for the beekeeper. i was fortunate to catch several of them. they drew out a good bit of comb for me and gave a little honey to harvest, plus they provided splits to put my grafted queens in. i'm using 'didn't swarm' as one of my main criteria for selecting mother queens.

Originally Posted by Michael Palmer

Well certainly, some swarm readily and must be managed early. Some never swarm no matter what management method you use. And, some will swarm later in the summer on any strong flow when there isn't any overhead nectar storage room.

all of my colonies are from similar stock. i am encouraged that i was able to keep about half of them from swarming this year. with the lessons learned, with some genetic selection/deselection, with the additional drawn comb i gained this year, and with the extra honey i'm leaving i hope to do better next year and in the years to come.

Originally Posted by Michael Palmer

And that's my point. The idea that prime swarms issuing before some contrived date are reproductive swarms, and those after are considered as something different is just false. All prime swarms are reproductive swarms...if that's what you want to call a prime swarm before Walt's special date.

Just because in your 3+ years you haven't had prime swarms go off during a heavy flow...after the special date...doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. It does, and it will if you don't keep ahead of the bees with proper supering.

could be, time will tell, and i'm not so naïve to think that there are not going to be exceptions to the rule. after all the bees have probably not read walt's insightful manuscript, but so far my observations have been closely agreeing with the timeline presented there.

Originally Posted by Michael Palmer

The main trigger to swarming is the backfilling of the broodnest. But, is backfilling the result of swarming preparations, or are swarming preparations the result of backfilling? I believe the later, and why I see swarms when there isn't enough overhead nectar storage room...emerging brood comb space is backfilled because there is no where else to store it. Walt believes that backfilling comes first, as an intentional procedure the bees use to initiate a reproductive swarm. I believe backfilling is caused by lack of storage room and is the trigger for swarming.

really good question, kind of a chicken and egg thing. after reversing deeps michael, do you sometimes have colonies that stop at the top of the second deep and ignore the first medium of empty comb that then go on to swarm?

many thanks for taking the time, i appreciate your replies.

Last edited by squarepeg; 10-17-2013 at 05:17 PM.

journaling the growth of a treatment free apiary started in 2010. 20+/- hives

Re: "lier or a fool"

Bernhard,
The reason I wanted to know about your deeps was the deeper they are, the more likely they are to have a band of capped honey at the top. The follow up question is do those 12 inch deeps sometimes have a band of capped honey all the way across the top? I would expect them to, if the colony was situated in a single deep to prepare for winter.
Assuming a band of honey across the top of the deep, it would be difficult to break up that band of honey with a super above.

Most colonies seem to percieve the top of their honey as the top of their residence cavity. It's so prevalent in some colonies in the early season that even in a loose-cluster period, there are no bees patrolling above the honey in an added empty super. That trait seems to be rooted in their instincts developed for the tree hollow where the top of their honey IS the top of the cavity.

Reading the steps in your spring management, my first thought was that you are inducing a "mode" change. We have described the mode changes with colony age in years.
1st year: Objective: Build enough comb and stores for wintering. Building an adequate size brood nest is top priority. Reproduction not on the agenda.
3rd year, and subsequent: Reproduce in early season while protecting existing colony survival.
2nd year: Have the flexibility to either complete establishment or perform as established.
Two distinct varients: early supersedure and early wax making capability.
The over-simplifications above make a world of difference in worker duties to meet the season objectives.

Mike P. is correct in his assertion that reproductive swarms can come after the normal swarm season. The bees have a long list of contingency plans or work-arounds. Back up plans A, B, C.....for more than just reproduction. Some can handle almost anything Mother Nature throws at them. I don't see that as a good reason to reject the NORMAL process. Knowing the normal process can help you plan your management.

Where I was headed with the above tangent was that I think CB taps one of those latent contingency plans from the past. Why the extra strong colonies do not swarm is still a mystery to me. My best guess is that somewhere in their ancestry, they selected for suvival in a circumstance similar to checkerboarding. I don't need to know what that circumstance was.

Re: "lier or a fool"

have a band of capped honey all the way across the top?
difficult to break up that band of honey with a super above.

Well, that depends. If you throw out all the combs that are not populated in early spring, narrow the hive with a follower board, you sort of pressing the Bien up. In a Warré hive this is a build-in feature without follower board. You only have eight combs in a Warré and the combs are rather small in length.

1st year: ...Reproduction not on the agenda.

There are lots of swarms here that swarm again in their very first year. We even have a name for such swarms in German.

Two distinct varients: early supersedure and early wax making capability.

It is a pitty, that you can't read a German book written in 1905, which explains how the processes in a hive are driven by broodfood/Gelee royale. It does make a lot of sense what the author is writing about young bees and the need for those bees to feed brood in order to get rid of their food sap (Futtersaft in German) that is produced by their glands. And how brood feeding, drone raising and comb building are valves for their pressure. That pretty much explains a lot, including swarms in year one.

In that book "Der Bien und seine Zucht" by Gerstung, it is described that you can take one or two combs of capped brood and replace them with open brood combs from another hive, you can lower swarming tendencies that just started. From my experience it works pretty well and it also fits into the temperature related brood activity like shown in another thread. (Brood/bees relation.)

(Side note: in that book the MDA-splitter method is described as well, but without the on the spot queen rearing.)

NORMAL process. Knowing the normal process can help you plan your management.

CB taps one of those latent contingency plans from the past.

I reckon there is no such a "plan", which of course I understand just as a descriptive word for the processes taking place. I reckon the deep connection of the Bien to the outside world is by outside temperatures, which not only drives flight activities but also restricts brood cluster size in early Spring. Temperature is the main key for the understanding of the processes inside the hive and how the bees tune with the outside world. Plants and flowers depend on temperatures, too, and through outside temperatures all the natural processes organize themself and make a well organized concert.

I also bees are like humans a bit. Think of yourself foraging for walnuts or so. You easily get into the "squirrel mode" and you start hoarding like crazy. I do have a garden and I always get into that squirrel mode and overproduce where there is an opportunity to do so. Hoarding what I can get hold of.

Bees are not much different. Bees fly like crazy when there is a flow. In early Spring there is a lot of pollen and less nectar. So they hoard a lot of pollen. Especially if there are empty cells available.

Now, in nature the bees swarm with a certain number of bees, all well prepared (more or less) with provisions. The number of bees in that swarm define the number of cells that swarm builds initially. So the initial nest size is perfectly synchronized with the swarm size. The rest of the year the growth of the bees' nest is defined again by the number of bees in that colony, which of course is a perfect picture of the fertility of the queen.

Bottom line: nest size and comb size is perfectly tuned to each other.

The same is true for the brood to comb ratio. The first patch of brood is surrounded with a ring of pollen. The young bees emerging are eating up that pollen and by doing so, they free and clean and warm the cells for the queen to lay eggs into them. Perfectly tuned!

Now, modern hives are somewhat misshaped. The width of the combs provoke the bees to store nectar and pollen to the sides of that comb. While nectar is shifted around in the hive easily, pollen doesn't get shifted. It has to be eaten up by young bees. Bees prefer fresh pollen over old pollen.

In a modern hive bees tend to store too much pollen in early Spring which disrupts the development of the broodnest and young bees do not find enough acceptors for their food sap. They start to excrete wax plates and do start building comb as they start drone comb. Drones are a good sink for the too much food sap in a hive. Once this sink is full, the bees start "small hives" within the colony, means: queen cells. Queen cells also use up a lot of food sap.

So the management of the bees by the beekeeper is best achieved if you think in food sap and it's path through the hive. Just a try to figure it: 100 emerging bees produce food sap for let's say 500 larvae. 500 emerging bees produce food sap for 2,500 larvae. 2,500 for 12,500; 12,500 for 62,500...

It's exponential character points out, that there has to be an end to that growth somewhere, something has to happen!

First they try get rid of it by wax making, then by drone raising, by queen raising and finally by swarming and the founding of a completely new nest. Swarm bees build best. For a reason.

The only way to stop swarming is to add more acceptors (young brood), remove young bees/sap producers (capped brood, about to emerge), reduce the colony's growth by the removal of the queen, or to let them build a lot of comb.

(Another but rather poor possibility would be to let the bees starve, by reducing the pollen and nectar income. And in fact, pollen trapping for instance reduces swarming tendencies a little.)

Most certainly there are a lot of ways to achieve the above, managing the food sap, but of course some are more material+labour intensive, more disruptive than others. With a deep understanding of the processes you will find a good way to produce optimal honey harvests, which might be not the highest yields possible, but the most economical and efficient. Thus sustainable.

Re: "lier or a fool"

Ace, part of the problem would be that the brood nest really should not be messed with. when the band of honey and the brood are on the same frame it presents some undesirable issues. Moving a frame or two of brood up in itself can trigger the forming of queen cells. So some care would have to be taken in the selection of the frames to be moved. I also believe that at the very best you have then removed those frames from a somewhat orchestrated system set up to tend for that brood. The bees decided how to configure the nest. I consider it extremely disruptive to mess with that. Keep in mind this may happening in late winter or very early spring. keeping brood warm is still very much of an issue. For me this past spring it would have been the first week of March. That happens to still be winter according to the calendar.

IN this case I have found the additional side expansion of the brood nest to be helpful.

Typically any brood nest has 2 frames of honey at it's outer edges. I tend to take those two frames and move them up then place two fraems of either foundation or drawn comb in their place. depending on the brood nest those frames may be place in the 2 and 9 position with the frames that had been in those spaces being moved to the outer edges. This still allows empty space to be placed near the nest breaks the honey cap at the top of the nest and still does not disrupt the placement of brood. In a brood frame with a pollen and honey cap I consider the food source for that brood is on that frame so I am not concerned with where I move the rest of the honey to. I also found that moving up frames of brood later results in frames of honey with patches of pollen left in them.

As for Micheal's claim that any Data is "Contrived". I am interested in a much more thorough explanation of just what has been contrived. The observations have in fact been made and no influence was exerted to cause them. I agree that the interpretation of those behaviors are very likely to not be accurate. but that is the nature of interpretation. As Walt mentioned earlier though. the why is not nearly as important as the result. It is not necessary to accurately know why bees will delay swarming if given space. it is only important to know that they will. I also do not agree with your 100% prevention criteria. I consider the prevention of one swarm as some level of effectiveness. 90% prevention is another. I also do not by that you where miss quoted. did you or did you not say swarming cannot be prevented? And if so did you say it based upon the requirement that swarms are prevented to 100%? Including when the method has been performed poorly? Including when a given method has not been performed at all bu merely claimed to have been? You support keeping nucs. I have one out of 11 that is doing poorly and is not likely to survive winter. So I now claim your methods as unreliable and in fact yo can't keep bees over winter in nucs. And I base that claim upon the criteria you seem to have on the swarming issue. that if 100% of all nucs cannot be over wintered regardless of how poorly I managed them. then the method does not work.

Re: "lier or a fool"

Ace, part of the problem would be that the brood nest really should not be messed with.

Well that pretty much puts the kabosh to beekeeping. I believe that a honey bee colony is a super organism and any manipulation you do to such organism is an intervention and effects the colony.

Yes, you don't want to go into the brood nest area in the dead of winter but as a swarm prevention in the spring after you have already reconfigured the hive, pulling the two center frames up into and empty box to break up the honey cap (assuming there is one) creates more space in the brood chamber and encourages the bees to fill the box above. Cold areas don't have a honey cap in the spring unless you walked away and the bees went into winter with three full boxes of honey on top.

Re: "lier or a fool"

Ace, Okay quit beekeeping. I really don't care if you decide what I said meant you can't touch your hive at all. I don't think what I wrote is all that hard to understand and if you are incapable of doing so I really am not interested in getting it sorted out for you.

Re: "lier or a fool"

Originally Posted by Daniel Y

I don't think what I wrote is all that hard to understand and if you are incapable of doing so I really am not interested in getting it sorted out for you.

I don't think you understood my point. Anything that you do to the hive, especially if it is effective in changing the natural instinct of the bees to multiply is a serious intervention. If it were not it would not work. I do intervene to try to prevent swarming.

Re: "lier or a fool"

Bernhard,
That's certainly an interesting interpretation of function of the jelly in swarm impetus. Is it OK if I believe that it is not the controlling influence? It may be entirely accurate but still be coincidental. I believe the steps to swarm commit are controlled by instinct. You are right about my use of the word "plan". I more often use the word format for a description of steps to swarm commit.

Our PhDs are sure that all the operational activities in the hive are controlled by pheromones. That will not stand up to scrutiny, either. At some point in the process, a colony-level DECISION must be made. That can happen overnight. The available pheromones didn't change that fast.

The instincts of the social insect have to be more complex, but complexity is not unique to honeybees. One of my favorites is the lowly mud dauber. They instinctively "know" where to look for spiders to feed their young. And they make mud in the dry season by going to a reliable water source, taking on water, going to suitable soil for their nest, and making the mud. Note that there are no pheromones at the water source or the patch of soil. (Guessing)

Re: "lier or a fool"

Data? What data? The repro swarm c/o date is contrived in my opinion. Lots of prime swarm come off after that date, there is no data that supports that theory, so it is contrived.

I cannot find it now but I could swear I read where you said you are "sick of the contrived Data".
As for the Date. Walt admits repeatedly that he has made up names to call the events observed. That does not mean those names are accurate but the observation where made and the bees did behave in a certain fashion, Repeatedly. My very first comment after reading Walts book was to say i do not think Walt has teh cause and effect correct. That is simply because cause and effect is extremely difficult to get right once much less an entire succession of them. Btu I do not question He has observed what He has observed. As he has point out in this thread alone. The why is not really that important. There is no need to know the why if we observe that the behavior on fact happens.

For example I think bees gather nectar an make honey out of boredom and it has nothing to do with derths, winter survival or anything else. What does it matter why they do it? they do it and few would argue that point.

I don't buy your 100% success criteria either. Does Walt reduce the swarming in his bees with his methods? Maybe you are right and their really is no cut of to Repro swarming. I just have to wonder why my bees are not non stop swarming then.

Why did my hive swarm when they had room to store a couple of hundred lbs of nectar? They still had a full medium for additional bees so they where not crowded. As far as I can tell Walt would say it was because his methods do not work if the bees are given foundation. foundation was all I had to give them. And guess what, it didn't work. I woudl say that for three other hives it did but those where also first year colonies that where building up from nucs. so to many other factors involved to evaluate Walts methods in accordance with those hives. I hope to have 8 second year hives next spring and will be able to see more.

Ace, All I can say is I did not make my comment based upon your definition of disturbance. You can either comprehend what I said or you can't. There are maybe 7 frames at most in a spring hive you should not touch. figure it out.

Re: "lier or a fool"

Mark, The entire conversation started about expanding a brood nest and my comment about not disturbing the brood nest by moving frames with brood in them but add space next to the nest.

Ace considers even opening the hive a disturbance of the brood nest. So I suppose the method I described will not work for him. What I pointed out is that I do not consider opening of the hive a disturbance of the brood nest and I am not accepting his definition of disturbance.

Make the manipulations without disturbing the brood nest and I defined disturbance as don't move frames of brood. And I don't care if you agree with my definition of disturbance. Can you figure out which frames have brood and then not move them? I have my doubts.